Changing drug, alcohol and smoking behaviours: report from ESRC Behaviour Change Seminar Series

Earlier this year a seminar on 'Changing drug, alcohol and smoking behaviours' took place as part of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) programme on policy and research in behaviour change.

See here for the short synthesis report [pdf] or some of the presentations here.

The seminar included a number of 'position statement' presentations from academics including Professor Jim McCambridge, Professor Gerard Hastings, Dr James Nicholls, Professor Christine Griffin and others, with each followed by audience discussion.

The synthesis report identifies three main themes which cut across much of the discussion; 'engaging with industry' (or not as some views suggested), 'harnessing citizen power' and 'social media'.

Following from the event, the report suggests key objectives for the future of behaviour change can be summarised as:

• To understand corporate behaviour better; in terms of its activities to engage with consumers (e.g. through social media platforms), its influence on policy and its research and development strategies for future profit making.
• To regulate industry as an essential pillar of behaviour change activity.
• To understand better the influence of policy and corporate behaviour on population-level behavioural trends.
• To continue to include brief, personalised and individualised interventions as part of a behaviour change approach where appropriate and effective.
• To better understand the relationship between people’s capacity for agency amidst the powerful cultural forces shaped in part by industries whose ‘bottom line’ will always be more important than the public health agenda.
• To explore mechanisms for engagement which have the goal of raising the critical consciousness of populations.
• To embrace a multi-­level behaviour change approach which includes critical capacity building, containment of industry and the countering of harmful corporate marketing with public health messaging.
• To better understand the actual subjects of the intended behaviour change; people with their own existing critical capacities, desires, pleasures and agencies; as people who might actually like vaping, or drinking, or for whom health and longevity are just one good among many others.
• To consider, as behaviour-­change proponents, how we know our goals are ‘right’? To consider the limitations of our own understanding of the social groups we are seeking to influence and to seek to understand change that happens in spite of our efforts?